Off The Hook Sports continues its 2022 Tennessee football preseason preview on the top 25 impact players for the Vols this upcoming season.

Coming in at No. 7 is junior running back Jabari Small.

Past Performance

Tennessee is going to be just fine at running back.

The Vols return Jaylen Wright and Jabari Small, who is posed for another herculean campaign in 2022. Small was the Vols’ best running back last season, and had the best season a Tennessee running back has had since 2017, when John Kelly rushed for nine touchdowns and over 800 yards.

Small was just under that in 2021. He rushed for 796 yards and found his way into the end zone seven times. He shined at the end of the year minus starting back Tiyon Evans after his surprise entry into the transfer portal. Evans rushed for over 250 yards and combined for three touchdowns across his final two games against Vanderbilt and Purdue.

Pretty good for a three-star running bac, huh? Small, from Memphis, Tennessee, could be making a lot of schools regret on passing on him this season. Coming out of high school, Small held offers from Tennessee, Ole Miss, Auburn and Texas A&M.

He had to wait for his opportunity. He saw the field in varying instances in 2020, rushing for just 117 yards on 26 carries. Small did not see the end zone until his sophomore year in Game 1 against Bowling Green.

Opportunities

When Josh Heupel was first hired there were doubts his offense would be able to sustain itself. In the early stages, Vols fans saw what he did at UCF and assumed the offense would be one-dimensional, rely too heavily on a dual-threat quarterback and quick, short route concepts and that running backs would have a small role, if any.

Heupel made sure to set the record straight off the jump.

“I think that’s the misnomer about what we do offensively,” Heupel said at SEC Media Days last July. “You look at, when we were at Missouri, we set a Power Five record for the fewest amount of zero negative yard plays and then reset the record the following year. When we took over at Missouri, they were 125th in the country in total offense. We ended up leading the league for two straight years in total offense. We’re very balanced in our approach. You look at our numbers, run and pass, we’re extremely balanced, so our ability for us, it really starts with the run game.”

And the final numbers from our one year of data back that up. In 2021, Tennessee rushed for 3,139 yards and passed for 3,342 yards. Pretty balanced, especially considering the Vols had one of the top passers in the SEC last season.

But it was more tumultuous than meets the eye for the running backs. Tiyon Evans was in and out of the starting lineup, Jaylen Wright and Small both had injury problems at some point during the year. An with all that in mind, Small still rushed for the most yards of any running back on the team, the most by a Vol RB since John Kelly in 2017.

The only thing standing in the way of Small and a 1,000 yard rushing season in 2022 (would be Tennessee’s first since Josh Dobbs in 2016) is the injury bug. Jaylen Wright will get valuable touches, as will Len’Neth Whitehead at times, but Small will be Heupel’s workhorse.

Hear it from…

Wright will be Tennessee’s scamp back in 2022. From the sound of the coaching staff, Small will be running people over a lot more.

“I think the first thing is just his body, more than anything,” running backs coach Jerry Mack said in spring practice. “He entered the season last year, he was probably about 199, I think in that last game against Purdue. By the time we hit the middle of the spring this year, he had been as high as 213. The body weight and the mass and the armor that he has put on his body is just tremendous.”

Heupel said recently that Tennessee needed to work on picking up third downs at a better rate than last season. This makes sense for multiple reasons. First, though Tennessee was volatile last season, they struggled against strong defenses. Staying on the field wears those teams out and makes Hendon Hooker, and by extension offensive coordinator Alex Golesh’s jobs that much easier.

It also alleviates the pressure put on the defense, which is already tired enough as it is. A goal of this Tennessee team in 2022 should be to avoid exhaustion, by all accounts. Small can certainly help on third down, especially if he is adding bulk. The Vols lacked a true third-down running back last season, transforming Small into just that would be a huge asset.